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The past is a foreign country...

...they do things differently there. So begins the novel The Go-Between.

These strange lockdown days bring a mix of longing for a return to the safety of what we knew as normal, mingled with a courageous dose of recognition that this is the once in a lifetime opportunity to make a place where the past will seem to have been done differently.

I was struck by a tweet by the economist and writer Jason Hickel

This is remarkable: 170 Dutch academics put together a 5-point manifesto for economic change after the C19 crisis, building on #degrowth principles. It has gone viral in Dutch media. In this thread I'll summarize the points in English. https://t.co/jjiJ2nVRW5

— Jason Hickel (@jasonhickel) April 17, 2020

and his translation of a manifesto for economic change from Dutch academics. Two screenshots of the main substance of his tweet.

Heady stuff.

Rowan Williams was interviewed on BBC Newsnight at the end of last month and raises similar questions, but from a different perspective

The welfare of the people we most care about is bound up with the welfare of those that they're close to.

Suddenly this pandemic has reminded us of our being part of a social network - those we share life with in isolation, those with whom we cross paths in the supermarket (even at a social distance), those who are working to support or care for us or our loved ones should matters take a turn for the worse. This is a timely undoing of the trajectory away from a sense of community and society which seeks the good of more than just me (and those like me).

The vested interests are powerful and, as we see with the problems of introducing obvious new technologies such as electric cars, will likely invest as readily in maintaining their position in the status quo as in finding some new way of working to allow the Dutch academics' vision to come into being.

As Bruce Cockburn once sang

Callous men in business costume speak computerese
Play pinball with the Third World trying to keep it on its knees
Their single crop starvation plans put sugar in your tea
And the local Third World's kept on reservations you don't see
"It'll all go back to normal if we put our nation first"
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse

 

Living (in) history

People have joked about not knowing what day it is, as one lockdown day merges pretty much into every other. The pattern of Church life, at least in terms of Holy Week and Easter, has meant this has not been much of a problem. However, looking back over the last few weeks they have blurred into one. Previously unthinkable 'social distancing' is now the norm for outdoor interactions. The pile of papers on my study floor which, up until a matter of a weeks ago, were all either urgent or overdue, have remained untouched and may well hit the recycling bin before any great purpose comes of them.

I needed to make a note in my journal this morning of a bit of a timeline for me of these last week. We are living in a history that will be long remembered but the details of which seem soon forgotten as their enormity is normalised into routine.

We met in Church together on Sunday 15th March for All Age Worship and then later for an evening Holy Communion. By the 17th we had been told to avoid gatherings, and so on the 18th I did Morning Prayer from the side chapel over Facebook. and then on the following Sunday, 22nd March, I did a short "solo" service in the morning from St Chad's. That day had been nominated as a National Day of Prayer, in response to which Faith and I did a live time of prayer on Facebook, lighting a candle as a sign of hope.

We were then given guidance to effectively close the Church buildings for public worship and private prayer. Faith and I led Morning Prayer on the 25th from home over Facebook and Trev had uploaded videos to create a Sunday morning service via YouTube for Sunday 29th March. Faith and I led a Facebook live Morning Prayer on the 1st April.

On the 4th it would have been our monthly Prayer Breakfast, so we hosted that using Facebook live and Zoom simultaneously.

I had been working on a series of YouTube videos for Palm Sunday (5th), Maundy Thursday (9th), Good Friday (10th) and Easter Sunday (12th) with a Monring Prayer on the Wednesday 8th on Facebook.

It has been a slightly hairy learning curve, especially on Facebook where it is live, so there is no re-take or edit possible. The Sunday morning from Church taught me that using the forward facing camera reverses the image and also Facebook seems to prefer portrait for video (who makes videos in portrait!!??!!) so it is far too easy to end up with a back to front and rotated by 90 degrees video.

The YouTube videos are less interactive, but there is time to shoot a retake and the software allows editing to get a better image and scene. I have developed my set up quite rapidly on this, noting that capturing consistent audio is tricky - I found another microphone in a cupboard, so I will give that a test. I think I have found a workable pattern of settings for my cameras and a workflow for getting the videos done and uploaded.

The final technical thing which still needs work is lighting. Doing these recordings in the house or garden gives very limited options of space and available light indoors is not enough usually for decent video. Thankfully, we have a good LED light which helps.

Content is still something that needs careful thought. Am I trying to recreate a service in Church, or offer something different? For example, on Easter Sunday I relied on being able to use video conferencing to record conversations with the rest of the team rather than have a traditional sermon slot. I think this worked well. It was good to have other voices and faces on screen too.

I am hoping to take some downtime after Easter to catch up and think about what might be a sustainable model of doing this for the next few months until lockdown is relaxed in some way.

"I want to be alone..."

Is usually said as an impression of Greta Garbo. She claimed never to have said those actual words, instead she said that she wanted to be let alone. However, YouTube seems to show differently.

The next book from the pile is Sarah Bakewell's 'How to live : A life of Montaigne in one questions and twenty attempts at an answer'.

This had been bought for me as we had been to Montaigne's chateau in the Dordogne some years ago. Montaigne was a 16th Century French Magistrate working in Bordeaux and also running his family estate 35 miles inland. However, in his late 30s and with the anticipated arrival of his first child he resigned his public office and withdrew to his estate in order to retire.

His chateau afforded him the space and income to allow his to withdraw like this, and he modified one of the towers in the corner of the chateau courtyard to allow him to be alone - even from his family. In order to maintain a sense of balance, he did the same with the other tower as space for his wife.

The suggestion is that he made this decision with the romantic notion that once withdrawn he would be able to rest and live a serene life, but he soon discovered 'the existential crisis Seneca had warned of', namely feelings of 'dissatisfaction, self-loathing, fear, indecisiveness, lethargy and melancholy', amongst others (p30).

His chateau, at least when we visited in the summer of 2017, was a rural idyll - perfectly set in the warm climate of the French countryside, surrounded by vineyards and woodland. It seems incredible to think that someone could live here and not be totally peaceful and in harmony with self and creation.

Sadly, for most of us our human nature seems to work like it had for Montaigne, and now we find ourselves in an enforced isolation without the opportunity or resources, maybe, to have such a pleasant location in which to be alone, we have to find our purpose in a different direction.

Bakewell writes that Montaigne found the answer by reading his favourite classical writers.

'Plutarch's advice was the same as Seneca's: focus on what is present in front of you, and pay full attention to it' (p32).

This started the process that led to Montaigne writing his famous Essays. These were not philosophical treatises or even intellectual exercises, but the record of Montaigne's feelings about issues from the fear of death to the act of posting a letter. It is not clear whether Montaigne wrote in order to publish his thoughts, or whether he was writing for himself, family and friends.

His rooms in his tower are quite remarkable as he had clearly intended to make the space as conducive to thinking as possible.

The view of the chateau from a window in the tower (the chateau was rebuilt after a fire in the 19th Century)

A view towards the other tower.

The famous roof beams showing some of the classic texts Montaigne had painted on them so he could read them as he walked around the room.

So Montaigne's initial intention was to retreat into (an albeit relatively luxurious and splendid) self-isolation, but this turned into a realisation that life with ease but without purpose can lead to listless dissatisfaction. He was fortunate to be able to find his purpose whilst supported by his own means - he did not need to create his writings in order to have them published to make money.

In Genesis, the theological reflection of the Creation story, we are told that God instructed Adam

‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ (Genesis 1:28)

even before the realisation of the need for a companion (relationship)

‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’ (Genesis 2:18)

I think these two accounts are intended to be parallel tellings, so I won't claim one has priority over the other. The point, I think, is that purpose (in fruitful labour) and companionship (in committed relationships) are significant for human beings - which is obvious because we are made in the image of a creative and relational God.

The need for people to seek out being alone and without the pressures of work is not, I would suggest, a contradiction of the above, rather it is because we have made a mis-shape out of work. For many it is no longer a blessing in itself (we think of the wage packet, or the sense of self-importance as we tell people what we are - or if that doesn't sound significant enough - what we do). There was also immense wisdom in the call to honour the Sabbath, and here I am only thinking about a proper day of resting and refocussing on being a 'human being' rather than an 'inhuman doing'. This is not the same as going back to the days of Sundays with shops closed and rubbish on the telly, rather the active making of space within our diaries and within ourselves.

So how are you going to be today? What are you going to bless by tending, nurturing or creating? And who are you going to be yourself with?

St Chad - is this where it needs to start?

Our Church building was consecrated on the 2nd March 1964 - St Chad's day. Hence we call our Church Family St Chad's too. Chad is buried at Lichfield Cathedral and on the floor there are four large images from his life. We have a copy of one of them in our main entrance hall at the back.

We don't know much about Chad's early life - and we only really have the one source for the rest, so it is a bit sketchy. However, the 7th Century was not a stable period in British history; these were the Dark Ages, after all.

The key elements for us are that Chad spent time travelling and learning about his faith. We know he went to Ireland at some stage and his elder brother, Cedd, held a key role in the Church in Britain. This suggests that Cedd and Chad may well have come from a quite important family.

Caelin, another brother of Cedd and Chad, persuaded a local king to build a monastery near Pickering in Yorkshire and this became a base for Cedd and Chad. Cedd eventually died of the plague at the monastery in Lastingham and we know that Chad succeeded him in becoming the Abbott. The Venerable Bede's account of this period stresses Chad's commitment to prayer and study.

We know that during the time of the Synod of Whitby in 663/664 many Church leaders died because of an outbreak of plague. Wilfrid was chosen to be the new Bishop of York but needed to find three other Bishops still alive in order to be properly consecrated. He decided to head off for northern France, was successfully consecrated but stayed on there. Because of this delay, King Oswiu invited Chad to become Bishop of the Northumbrians. Chad, like Wilfrid, faced the problem of how to be consecrated. It seems that by then there was only one Bishop in the whole of Britain, so Chad went to find him in Wessex.

Chad was consecrated by Wini and started his ministry. Wilfrid returned to Britain some time later ,and then in 669 the Pope sent Theodore of Tarsus to take over as Archbishop of Canterbury with the main task of regularising the Church following the various deaths and consecrations. Theodore asked Chad to step down and allow Wilfrid to take the role he had been invited to back during the Synod. Theodore was struck by how humbly Chad behaved in making way for Wilfrid. He therefore formalised Chad's consecration as Bishop and allowed him to return to his previous role of Abbott at Lastingham.

Later that year, King Wulfhere of Mercia requested a Bishop for his peoples. Theodore remembered the humble Chad and sent him from Yorkshire to Mercia. Chad was used to walking everywhere, hence the bare feet in the picture and this is Theodore sending Chad to Mercia and insisting he went be horse and not on foot as was his custom (there is a story of Theodore actually having to manhandle Chad into the saddle).

So what can we learn from this, especially as we think about our vision and purpose here in Patchway? I hesitate to suggest there may be links with Chad's living at a time of political turmoil and outbreaks of the plague and where we find ourselves today!

Prayer and study (and worship, of course) are the key parts of the monastic life and sustain a community at work. This is far more than simply coming to Church on a Sunday - or even just being the Church on a Sunday. There is a commitment to the hard work of prayer and the labour of study which we seem to lose sight of very quickly. 

I find the humility of Chad in this account very moving. It represents, I think, a wider question of character.

Chad was willing to be sent in response to the clear need. Being sent out is not the same as being thrown out, or being sent away. It means that there was a clear purpose and direction. I often smile at the representation of Theodore (on the right) in this image as he looks a trifle sullen. But note that his right hand is being raised in the traditional sign of blessing - Chad is being blessed to go. The flip-side of that is surely that Chad wouldn't have found a blessing by staying where he was.

We have much we can learn from this as we follow Jesus, but remember Chad.

Some recent articles on New Housing

There seems to have been a flurry in the last week or so of articles about New Housing.

The good news! There is an increase in the number of houses being built to meet the huge demand, but concerns continue to be expressed about where the housing is being located. Flood plains might make for cheap land to build on, but do they provide the sort of housing experiences that people expect for their homes? There is also the issue of how we place large developments in the context of the current transport infrastructure so that this does not mean simply more roads.

I've a soft spot for places like the Barbican and the work of le Corbusier (if you can have a soft spot for Brutalism), and so an interesting film clip with a recognition of some of the aspiration for better homes behind much of the 60s concrete buildings which are looked down on in many quarters. 

Well-being and working at peak performance

A fascinating short interview from the BBC Business section with António Horta-Osorio, the CEO of the Lloyds Banking Group about mental well-being https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/business-51181861/mental-health-combine-peak-performance-with-moments-of-rest

This chimed with some great insight shared by CPAS on leadership issues in general but the areas around dealing with stress were very good indeed. Going back to my Engineering days, the human being under stress actually seems to act in a way parallel with a spring. Hooke's Law describes the relationship be relationship between stress and strain in an elastic body, such as a spring. As strain increases and decreases, so does the extent of deformation (stretching or bending, for example). This relationship is linear (stretching and returning to the original shape) until the yield point is reached, after which the deformation becomes permanent (the metal beam is now bent, or the spring snaps).

From https://www.toppr.com/guides/physics/mechanical-properties-of-solids/hookes-law-and-stress-strain-curve/

This page also gives some more information about the mechanics of this, if you are interested.

So too with the human being. A footballer might play in front of a hostile crowd with enormous stakes up for grabs, but that stress is then given time to work out of their system (relaxation is part of the cycle between matches) but for many, Mr Horta-Osorio for example, the stakes remain too high for too long and something has to give in order to prevent permanent damage.

I admire his courage for speaking out in a world in which somehow it is seen as a sign of strength to be able to cope with constant pressure.

Dare I write about Brexit?

I have been working on my thoughts over the current situation. Nobody I know has told me they are happy with where we are today; some because they want us to turn back, others because we haven't gone far enough. A lovely man in Church last week was in tears about this. We have been failed in numerous ways by a variety of our leaders. I welcome the call for a compromise, but I am struggling to see how such a compromise can be reached in the current climate.

The issue is almost terminally divisive, and was allowed to proceed in that way because of complacent leadership by those who framed a referendum in such simplistic and lazy terms, and by allowing the campaign to have been stoked so emotively by many - I want to say on both sides, but it would seem that the dishonest slogans on the sides of a red bus and illegal campaign funding were predominantly on the leave side. The remain side lacked leadership too. As a result nobody described a clear and honest vision of what leaving or remaining would look like. A recent tweet by John Simpson, the political journalist...

I’ve been going through my notebooks for the referendum campaign, looking for any warnings that we might just crash out of the EU with no deal of any kind. Haven’t found a single hint of it. Just lots & lots of assurances that it would be dead easy to negotiate our departure.

— John Simpson (@JohnSimpsonNews) March 13, 2019

...and so we are caught in limbo by warring sides, and one significant option - as demonstrated by the current petition and last week's march - is being intentionally kept off the table. In those circumstances compromise can only mean one side relenting and I don't see that happening.

Compromise should have really been the first action by the then newly promoted Theresa May back on the 13th July 2016. That may not have been popular, but that is the sort of action that a leader should have taken.

I will continue to pray for our leaders in all the major parties, and on both sides of the issue in question. I will pray for the wisdom and humility that true leadership demands.

As Theresa May's premiership draws to a close, the possible successors will be considering whether to make their moves. The names presented thus far all seem (to my mind at least) to be tainted by their involvement in the poor leadership that has got us to this point. May they consider very carefully for whose benefit they want high office.

The tragedy of King Richard the Second

It felt slightly odd to go to the cinema to watch a live broadcast of a play - but that's what we did. The Almeida Theatre production of Shakespeare's play about the downfall of Richard II.

 

It's Opening Night of The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, prepare for a battle of power! 👑

Richard II v Bolingbroke pic.twitter.com/sPXxKmdToZ

— Almeida Theatre (@AlmeidaTheatre) December 18, 2018

We were promised a 'visceral' production, and they were not wrong. By the end of the play, the cast and stark set were splattered with (presumably fake) blood, soil and water. I hadn't read the play previously, and the speed and energy of the production, along with it being quite heavily stripped down, made following every nuance of plot and argument tricky.

Richard's downfall, as told by Shakespeare, is due to a failure of his leadership. He is usurped by his cousin Bolingbroke who, upon ascending to the throne becomes Henry IV and who then starts to face the realities of the pressure of expectation upon him.

Richard sees himself (and him alone) as God's man - ordained for the throne - but sees no need for that to alter his behaviour or (as found frequently enough in the Old Testament) for there to be the possibility of God's anointing moving on where the King lacks the faithfulness God requires. The suspicion runs through the play that it was Richard who arranged for the death of the Duke of Gloucester. Gloucester had been a leader of a rebellious group of nobles against Richard and Richard would seem to have had him murdered in return. Bolingbroke and Thomas Mowbray accuse each other of treachery resulting in them challenging each other to a duel. Richard intervenes, but only at the very last minute suggesting a lack of seeing the need to address conflict at its root, and he sentences both men to banishment. Here Richard makes a second mistake. He banishes Mowbray forever (if, as history suggests, it was Mowbray who murdered Gloucester at Richard's behest then this banishment served to remove a key testimony against the King) but only banishes Bolingbroke for ten years - a sentence he almost immediately reduces to six, for no significant reason. Commentators suggest that these faults; indecisiveness, abruptness and arbitrariness are the flaws which lead inevitably to Richard's fall.

Bolingbroke, upon eventually being crowned, is then faced with several problems. Richard is still alive and imprisoned at Pomfret Castle, and so Henry feels he lacks legitimacy. He is also faced with adjudicating in family disputes which tax his patience. Sleep seems to desert him. Perhaps the syle of leadership which Richard shaped around himself, not least in the expectation of unquestioning obedience and fawning loyalty, has created a vacuum around his successor, leaving him devoid of people with skill and judgment of their own upon which he can rely.

The middle portion of the play is full of pathos. Richard realises the wane of his rule

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;

but it is left to his uncle, John of Gaunt, to speak of his grief at the loss to the nation's prestige, diminished by the machinations at court

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
...
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,

It is not only those in the positions of leadership who pay the price for their failures.

That England that was wont to conquer others
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.

 

Images and a way of seeing the world

I have come to appreciate images more and more as I struggle to create new images of my own.

The original photographs from which this image was layered, blended and manipulated were taken whilst leaning over a wall looking at the Aysgarth Falls in Yorkshire. I can see that, of course, but the viewer who was not present at that moment would not. Perhaps having given a clue, it is possible to make out the water on the lower left, and the white of some of the falls across on the mid-right. The odd tree is apparent along the skyline.

It is this image on the left by Brett Weston that I credit with kicking off my love of photography.

It is a very simple image, dated 1971 and taken somewhere in Holland. There is no further detail of the location, although I am currently planning a trip to the Netherlands with the hope of capturing an image of my own as homage to this one.

I don't see the world in black and white - I relish the beautiful colour palette of the natural world - but this image helped me to see the possibility of form, texture and composition that black and white images allow and encourage. The simplicity of the range of tones emphasises the complex subtleties of mist and reflected trees. The result is an image which invites the eye to stay and linger - echoing the stillness of the original scene.

It is quite a long way from being inspired the image of Weston's to making the abstract (technically more post-impressionist, I would say) type of pictures above. I could write a list of people whose works inspired me by opening up a new set of possibilities of capturing images. Their artistry, and especially those generous enough to post Youtube videos explaining their thought processes, creates a new way of seeing reality.

The power of an image to create a new way of seeing has been on my mind as I have been slowly - very slowly - reading Jesus' words in Matthew 5 that we know as the Beatitudes. Nine simple statements which describe those being blessed by God whose artistry captures a new way of seeing the world around. Each seemingly simple statement generates a complex image through which Jesus invites us to make out the terrain of a different place; to begin to be able to make out its textures and patterns of a hitherto unknown landscape.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit", he begins, "for theirs is the kingdom of heaven". I found myself pondering who the poor in spirit might be. Perhaps, those South Sudanese refugees we met in Pagyrinia back in January? And yet, their faith was a real inspiration to me. In comparison it was me who was poor in spirit! I think that is more the question Jesus would have me consider - when am I poor in spirit? When am I most ready to depend totally on God, rather than my own resources?

Six weeks into my reflecting on the Beatitudes I am on the fourth - less than half way. As I have read each one, this has become my question - if that is what it takes to be blessed, what do I need to do? 

 

Exploring Ascension and Thy Kingdom Come

We had planned to have tea together and then some creative prayer time to mark Ascension, so I added in something of Thy Kingdom Come as well. I blagged a lot of ideas from the prayer stations on the Thy Kingdom Come pages.

We made each station out in the garden, which allowed us to link in to the sense in the Acts 1 account of the Ascension of the disciples gazing up at the clouds....

...and we made a small labyrinth using pebbles to mark the pathways.

The pdf of the stations we made and added to the Thy Kingdom Come ones are here  Download Thy Kingdom Come stations 13 May 18

If you want to use these then please feel free to download, but I'd love to see a photo of how you set it up.